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Photo by Erin Nelson.
Ashley Gann RV Life
Ashley Gann smiles as she tosses her 15-month-old daughter Rhett in the air outside of their RV at Oak Mountain State Park campground on Jan. 24.
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Photo by Erin Nelson.
Ashley Gann RV Life
A height stick notes each of the Gann’s children’s heights in the Gann family RV.
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Photo by Erin Nelson.
Ashley Gann RV Life
Ashley Gann helps her 15-month-old daughter, Rhett, put on boots.
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Photo by Erin Nelson.
Ashley Gann RV Life
Magnets and photos decorate the refrigerator.
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Photo by Erin Nelson.
Ashley Gann RV Life
The master bedroom in the Gann family’s RV.
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Photo by Sydney Cromwell.
Ashley Gann provides the evening weather forecast at CBS 42. Gann was recently named chief meteorologist.
When Ashley Gann is not forecasting the weather as chief meteorologist at CBS 42, she can be found at Oak Mountain State Park.
Not just visiting, but living there with her family, in their two-bedroom, two-bathroom RV.
While the family had taken several trips in their camping trailer over the past few summers, this fall, Gann and her family moved out of their home in Mt Laurel into their home on wheels.
Gann and her husband, Derek, came to the decision after renovations on their home became too much.
“It started with redoing the kitchen cabinets. Then it was the counters and repainting walls, and the projects just became overwhelming,” Gann said.
She had a friend who was a real estate agent that offered concierge services that included handling the upgrades and taking them out of the closing costs.
“The conversation started about needing to move into the camper for a couple of weeks while the work was finished on the house, and we could either move back in and list as rental or sell it,” Gann said.
With some advice from her sister, who had spent time living the RV life for a year as a travel nurse, the Ganns started shopping for an RV and found one they loved.
Then the purging process began. Gann said during the seemingly never-ending process of decluttering and minimizing, she said she did a complete inventory mentally, emotionally and physically. It solidified that RV living was the right choice, at least for a season, and she and her family learned what they really need.
She also did an inventory of her time and realized how little time she actually spent in her own house.
“I don’t need a house for entertainment,” she said. “We teach our children to go to college, get married, register for stuff, buy a house, but we don’t teach them to prioritize what really matters.”
She said there is very little she feels like she needs to save, aside from sentimental items like her baby’s dedication gowns and her grandmother’s aprons.
“I want to make sure whatever I’m holding onto serves a purpose,” she said. “If it has value and purpose, I’ll save it. I don’t want to teach my kids to be attached to things. We want to make our lives more intentional and teach our kids that it’s not the stuff you take with you, but the memories.”
Another one of her goals was to spend more time with her family, and how could they not, living in such close quarters? Her three kids, age 5 and under, all sleep in one room and love it. They could also travel when they wanted to visit family out of state.
The family has already stayed in several different spots since October. A week at the Hoover Met, several weekends at Lake Martin and a campsite at Auburn so they could attend Auburn football games and Wind Creek State Park, along with Oak Mountain.
The couple has started looking at property for land and will reassess what happens with their Mt Laurel house. Meanwhile, they will continue the RV life. They plan to be in Pelham during March and April, Hoover in May for the baseball tournament and they have to figure out their plans for the summer.
Wherever they are, they are sure to make new friends. She has been surprised at the number of people they have met at the different spots.
“We’ve met some of the neatest people from places like South Dakota, Texas and Michigan,” she said. “I’ve talked to more people since living in the RV than I did in our neighborhood the last six months.”
As a meteorologist, Gann knows about the safety factor in an RV during severe weather. The bathrooms at the state parks are all and used as storm shelters.
She feels a sense of freedom and peace in the RV that she didn’t while in her house.
“All the things living in the house, you don’t know how much you are keeping up with until you step away,” she said. “I don’t have to spend my Saturday or Sunday afternoons cleaning, but instead can be outside playing with kids. I feel like we’ve gotten control back. We are in a place of freedom and don’t care what happens next, whether we build or buy, whatever we do next, we will do it for all the right reasons.”
